The City
I'm not going to pretend that Stuttgart city centre is the most beautiful
in Germany. It's certainly not the prettiest in Baden-Württemburg. It's
not even the prettiest in Stuttgart. The town planners have a lot to answer
for. Personally, I would like to see a commando snatch squad abseiling down
the council offices to drag those responsible off to the Hague, where they
could be charged for crimes against humanity.

Much of the city has been designed for the convenience of motor vehicles. It's just
a pity that most of you, like me, are human beings. Consequently, you're likely to
find yourself ushered into a maze of underground rat holes, where you can't obstruct
the cars. The area around the Hauptbahnhof (itself a handsome stone building) is particularly
bad in this regard. Those with less that perfect orienteering skills may be down there
a few days before finding an exit. The city I'm most reminded of is Birmingham: strangely
somewhere else where the car industry plays a key role in the local economy. Though
there are limits to this comparison: I can't imagine there are many vineyards within
the boundaries of England's second city.

On the positive side, the Schloßgarten is a very pleasant tongue of green poking
into the city. It's just a shame that the main roads either side of it can make it
seem like little more than a giant central reservation. There is also a minuscule
old town hidden away behind the Rathaus. Here are the city's most attractive buildings.
Though for some reason the planners have allowed the construction of Europe's ugliest
multistorey car park on the opposite side of the street. Nice one.

It's People
You could be forgiven for thinking, after reading the above description, that I don't
think much of Stuttgart. Well, you'd be wrong. Ignoring the comically inept planning,
the city has a charm and warmth which are remarkably disarming. It may not win any
beauty contests, but it does have lots of personality. I found the inhabitants to
be a very friendly and courteous bunch, who made my stay a lot of fun. I ended up
having a real affection for the place, warts and all.

Public Transport
Like all large German cities, one thing the planners have most certainly got right
is public transport. Stuttgart has a well-organised system of U- and S-Bahn trains
that will take you any where you need to go in the city. A day ticket for the two
central zones will set you back 4.70 euros

Dinkelacker
- Schwaben Bräu markets beers under four different
brand names: Dinkelacker, Schwaben Bräu, Sanwald and Cluss. These are the
local breweries which combined to form the current company. Schwaben Bräu
only merged with Dinkelacker in 1996 but their brewery site is already being
redevelopped as a shopping centre and car park. For "technical reasons"
(wanting a nice cleared site) the developer was sadly unable to retain the
historic Zum Ochsen brewery tap. All production is now concentrated at the
Dinkelacker brewery, situated on the edge of the city centre. I can't say
that I was impressed by the Dinkelacker beers. They are all far too buttery
for my taste. Schwaben Bräu I found significantly better. The group's wheat
beers are sold under the Sanwald brand and are reasonable enough. These
are found in bars badged both as Dinkelacker and Schwaben Bräu.

Stuttgarter
Hofbräu AG, which also owns Moninger in Karlsruhe, is slightly
larger than Dinkelacker, but its beer is oddly difficult to find in pubs
(as opposed to snack bars and other such outlets) in Stuttgart. Their pils
isn't bad at all with a decent dose of bitterness not always found in South
German attempts at the style.

Small BreweriesI
tried two of the home brew pubs - Calwer-Eck
and Sophie's Brauhaus
- and all their beers were poor. Far too yeasty and tasting as if they were
brewed from malt extract. I didn't bother with the remaining three brewpubs.

Other
Breweries
There is a reasonable selection of beer from outside the city, some from
elsewhere in Baden-Württemburg, some from Bavaria. I have tried to feature
as wide a range of these as possible in the pub guide below.

Paulaner and
Löwenbräu
both have tied houses in the city serving a wide range of their beers.

Cannstatter Volksfest
Munich has its Oktoberfest, Stuttgart the Cannstatter
Volksfest. Held in September, it's stayed truer to its origins than
its Bavarian cousin: a fair with beer tents, rather than the other way around.
The festival began in 1818 as a present from Queen Katharina of Württemberg
to her starving subjects.

The local breweries all brew a special Festbier of around 5.5%. The litre
servings make it easy to drink far more than you intended.

The next Fest takes place 24.09.2005 - 09.10.2005.

Stuttgart Pubs
My intention has not been to provide a systematic or comprehensive catalogue
of Stuttgart's pubs, bars and beer gardens. This is just what the Yellow
Pages, some internet research and a helping of dumb luck came up with.

If you know any exceptional Stuttgart bars or pubs that I've missed, please
email me the detailsand
I'll include them in this page.

Calwer Eck is situated on the first floor of a modern building on one
of Stuttgart's pedestrianised shopping streets. The street is one of the city's better
ones, with a whole row of attractive old houses opposite this pub.

That was, as they say, the good news. The bad news follows. Inside is a rumble-jumble
of raised booths with high tables, half-partioned off areas and a long bar snaking
along one wall. It's the sort of fake 19th century tat to be found in crap circuit
pubs the length and breadth of the UK. This German version is no worse and no better.
Too dark, far too noisy and far too full. It has all the charm of a sixties tower
block.

If the beer were any good, this might all be bearable. Sadly, it isn't. The beer is
possibly even worse than the ambiance. Far too yeasty and very homebrew in taste.
I could easily brew better myself. Not that the young trendies stacking the place
out seemed to mind: they were slurping the stuff down by the pitcherful. I was grateful,
at least, that the menu explained that the Braumeister Bier is supposed to be a märzen.
I had been puzzling over the question as to what style this turgid, sweetish, amber
liquid was supposed to be.

Stylistically there's little to choose between Sophie`s Brauhaus and
Calwer Eck. It's another barn of a place on the first floor of a crappy modern building.
Here you can at least see the brewing vessels stuck against one wall. It didn't look
the most practical kit I've ever seen, but I'll believe that they do brew here. There
are various partitions that partially divide the room, but not quite enough to remove
the impression that you're on a railway station concourse. Everything is retro in
a quite unconvincing way with lots of wood and bits of old kack hanging from the ceiling.

The beer was another big disappointment, the Schwarzbier having the consistency of
soup it was so yeasty. But it wasn't quite as full of yuppies as Calwer Eck, the food
wasn't bad and the service OK, so I'll give it one more star.

I had best warn you that the address of the Nil Café is deceptive:
the pub is really located inside the Schloßgarten. If you walk along the Canstatter
straße and take the only entrance into the park from that street then you'll
be in pretty much the right spot.

The pub is quite an odd place. Housed in a modern, single-storey building, most of
the seating is outside overlooking a small lake. The building itself has two rooms,
one of which has a huge high roof and is a bit like a theatre in the round or a village
hall. The bar counter is in a hallway between the two rooms and is functionally contemporary
(lots of shiny metal, I mean). It's too bland for my taste, but the outside seating
is very pleasant, with its soothing view of ducks swimming around. By the way, the
"Nil" in the name means Nile rather than zero. One interesting touch are
the warnings on the table umbrellas, advising pregnant women of the dangers of drinking
alcohol.

There is a decent range of Distelhäuser beers, with Hefeweizen Dunkel and Kristall
Weizen in bottles.

About a hundred metres or so back towards the town centre from Nil Café
about slap bang in this section (Mittlerer) of the Schloßgarten is a beergarden.
Now it doesn't have the most inspired name in the world, but it is in a rather pleasant
spot. Sadly, it isn't as peaceful as it could be. The park is quite narrow at this
point and the traffic noise from the main roads along either side is hard to ignore.
It's also quite easy to make out announcements from the railway station, which is
on the other side of Canstatter straße.

OK, now I've described the location, I'll continue with the pub itself. Obviously,
being a beer garden there is little in the way of a building. It's nothing more than
a little kiosk, with a counter on three sides. Other than that, there are just lots
of long tables and benches under the open sky. It's all self-service and there is
a 2 euro deposit on each glass.

We're talking here not just about a Brauerei-Ausschank but a genuine
brewery tap: the Dinkelacker brewery is directly behind this pub. It's a broad but
shallow building, no doubt restricted in shape by the brewery.

It's
decorated in a very familiar brewery tap style - it bears more than a passing resemblance
to some of the ones in Düsseldorf. For those of you who don't know what that
means, I'll explain briefly. Those of you who have read one of my guides before can
now safely skip ahead to the next paragraph. There are red tile floors, pine wall
panelling and big pine tables. In the windows are some colourful bits of leaded glass
that I particularly liked. The bar counter is at the rear, up a couple of steps. By
the entrance are a couple of weird bits of old brewing kit on display.

On my visit, it had a mostly older clientele, though that could have been because
I was there at midday. It's a pleasant enough place, if ever so slightly upmarket
(tabelcloths). You would also expect a brewery tap to have a little more beery atmosphere.
My waiter was attentive enough, but not exactly informative in response to my queries
as to which beers were on sale. In particular, he neglected to mention the unfiltered
Kellerpils, easily the most interesting beer on offer.

Dinkelacker-Schwaben Bräu, because of the many mergers that formed the
today's company, has more than one brewery tap in Stuttgart. This is the one from
Weißbierbrauerei Sanwald, which was bought up in 1977.

I haven't visited this pub myself, but have included it in this guide as it is bound
to be of some interest. If anyone out there can provide me with some more details,
I will be very grateful. (Thanks to Peter Seal for doing just that.)

About the biggest thing going for Hacienda is that it's on the same
street as the Dinkelacker brewery tap, on the way back into town. Another brewpub
in a crappy modern building that left its charm back on the architect's drawing board.
This time the brewpub/Mexican restaurant is down in the cellar while the ground floor
is occupied by a icecream parlour/pasta restaurant under the same management.

I have to admit that, though I had intended to go inside, I just couldn't bring myself
to do it. Modern (in the perjorative "modernist" sense of the word), bland,
tacky and totally without appeal is how I would describe it. I couldn't help myself
from keeping on walking. Calwer Eck, Sophie's Brauhaus and Hacienda are all so terrible
in exactly the same way that they could be a chain. A chain with the theme of crap,
obviously. Please tell me that I'm wrong, but I couldn't help assuming that the beer
would be as awful here as in the other two brewpubs.

I stumbled upon Zum Paulaner when looking for Calwer Eck, which is a
bit further along Calwer Straße from Stadtmitte S-Bahn station. If I had had
any sense, I wouldn't have bothered going any further.

Zum
Paulaner is in a pretty three-storey building and has a decent sized "beer garden"
on the little pedestrianised square in front of it. The seats here have, on one side,
an excellent view of yet another main road. Having your own private fountain, as they
effectively do here, is a feature more likely to tempt customers. Inside it's a typical
Paulaner tied house. There's lots of dark wood and a cosy, if slightly old-fashioned,
atmosphere. There are rooms on both the ground and first floors.

If only more of Munich's (or Germany's) regional breweries would follow Paulaner's
lead and build up a chain of outlets across the country. The number of times a Paulaner
outlet has been the best I could find is a sad reflection of the state of pubs in
many German cities.

The food is excellent and only slightly above the price in most pubs in the city.
You can't argue with the selection of Paulaner beers. The bottled beers are: Paulaner
Original Münchner Märzen, Paulaner Original Münchner Dunkel, Paulaner Hefeweißbier
kristallklar, Paulaner Roggen.

It's time for a confession: there are times when I discover a pub so
good that I'm tempted to keep it to myself. However, being an honest and generous
soul, I feel obliged to pass on my knowledge.

I happened upon Mathäser after an hour of walking around the centre of Stuttgart
getting increasingly frustrated by the city's inept town planning. Having wandered
into the couple of streets that make up the old town, my spirits were raised by the
sight of some attractive human-sized buildings. One of these is Mathäser. Once
through the door, it was love at first sight. A down-to-earth pub with a red tiled
floor, wood panelling and simple furnishings. Properly lit, no thunderous music, just
the sound of happy human voices.

Noticing I was taking notes, a fellow customer (in fact, he's one of the two chaps
sitting outside in the photo above) enquired what I was doing. When I told him that
I wrote about pubs, he said "You must see upstairs - it's beautiful". With
which he took me off on a tour of the dining area on the first floor. And he was spot
on - it is beautiful. The bay window you can see on my photo houses a sublime little
alcove. The little bridge stretching above the archway to the house next door is home
to another charming eating area. Everything is done in a simple style totally in keeping
with the building.

Back downstairs, the barman was very well-informed about what he was tapping. The
beer selection - all Löwenbräu - is equally impressive, including some less fashionable
parts of their range. There are six draught beers, including the Märzen which
I have never found elsewhere. The barman was knowledgeable enough to know of its rarity
and suggest that I try it. He was also interested enough in the subject to ask me
questions about British beer.

All in all, a wonderful pub It's exactly what I hope - but rarely do - find when in
a strange city. Friendly, sociable customers and staff, beautiful decoration, excellent
beer, genuine local food. I can't praise the place enough - it's an absolute gem.
One of the best pubs I know in Germany, or, for that matter, Europe.

The bottled beers are Löwenbräu Kristallweizen and Löwenbräu Schwarze-Weisse.

I'm including this pub not because I think it's the best in Stuttgart
(which it isn't) but because of its very useful location. My reasoning is this: where
is the casual visitor more likely to be than the main railway station?

Not that it's such a bad pub, either. It's modern and clean in design, without being
totally bland. The bar counter fills a large part of the room and is surrounded by
numerous high stools. Along one wall are a few raised booths with fixed benches. The
bar itself has some attractive gleaming copper bits, including the beer taps. The
pub itself doesn't sell food, but right next door is a sausage counter - Alles Wurst
("It doesn't matter" in colloquial German).

Deli inflicts a post-modernist interior (exposed ducts and all) on a
lovely old stone house in the handkerchief-sized old town of Stuttgart. I can't say
that I'm impressed by that sort of insensitive treatment in a building like this,
especially given its rarity in this soul-crushingly modernist city.

The aforementioned "contemporary" décor is clean, bland and very
martini - any time, any place, anywhere. There are some seats outside where, with
one glance, you can see pretty well all the worthwhile buildings in Stuttgart. I include
this pub as it's a handy place to try out the Stuttgarter Hofbräu beers before
advancing on to the outstanding Mathäser opposite.